.ltWords are weapons in the wars of the roses and Marsha
The Times,
15 October 1973
The Editor disclaims the title; she is much happier when the editorship is a cooperative effort. It sounds a remarkable attitude - and it is. The Editor is Marsha Rowe and the publication is Spare Rib, The Editor's sweater says MARSHAMARSHAMARSHAMARSHA all over it, and practically the whole of the rest of the staff is called Rose - Rosie Boycott, Rose Ades, Rosie Parker, Rose Verney. They work half way up a tiny battered house in the Carnaby Street area, in two bright yellow rooms which are the editor's office, the advertising department, the art room, news room, subscription, back numbers and warehouse.
Spare Rib - rather sparely described as a "women's magazine" - started more than a year ago, and the fact that it is still going is an achievement for a magazine founded by two enthusiasts, Marsha Rowe and Rosie Boycott, on ú2,500. "We were so naive, we didn't know what we were in for" - and if they had they probably wouldn't have done it. Other "alternative" magazines, such as Ink and Seven Days had nearly 10 times the capital, and collapsed in half the time. Marsha had worked on the ill-fated Ink, coming to it after an apprenticeship in the magazine field which included (rather improbably) a stint on Australian Vogue and, rather more usefully, on Oz in Australia and Britain, which taught her all the elements necessary for producing an underground paper.
The set up, she says, differs totally from the ordinary magazine office. In the first place, since they are all women, they have all, in the past, toiled away in frustrating jobs as secretaries, so nobody now has a secretary. They do all their own boring jobs as well as the interesting ones. For every issue all hands spend two days sending out the subscription copies. It is the hard way but a rewarding one.
In the early stages, criticism was hard to take, both personally and collectively, but they seem to have battered their way to an agreed process whereby Marsha is the Editor and Rosie Boycott the News Editor - for the time being. Anybody want to be business manager? They did line one up but the candidate, instead of producing, as expected, one (relatively) manageable child, had twins....
Marsha Rowe is an Australian, small, dark, and a living riposte to the gibe that all supporters of Women's Lib look like the back of a No 11 bus. The Editor's principal headache is finance. All day she copes with the business and administrative side. The editorial work gets done in the middle of the night, she says - but they all seem to work like that, living, breathing and sleeping work. Every magazine starts out with financial worries. The first one is to get distributed nationally - if W. H. Smith will not accept you, you are in trouble. Fortunately Spare Rib doesn't have the problems that Oz and IT have had - though at some outspoken four letter words contained in an advertisement in Issue 13, Smith's did turn pale and refuse distribution. Spare Rib's devoted readers rescued the copies from Smith's warehouses and sold them themselves. Something of a financial loss, but every Editor must envy such loyalty.
The second problem is advertising - as in much of the alternative press, the record companies and publishers are their mainstay. Media men (and women) in the advertising agencies are very wary of the alternative press. Well they might be, since the magazine runs a column called "Sellout" - showing advertisements which they consider exploit women, and pursuing the firms involved to ask them for their comments.
The readers are not only loyal, but critical. The spelling mistakes are a bit of a trial to them all. But these have, after all, been known to occur in more established publications, and one irritated (but loyal) journalist from the Fleet Street end of the market offered to give them a hand with the sub-editing if needed. The magazine has changed considerably, in form and content, since it began. From the first they decided on its "glossy" format, based on the conviction that women won't read anything tatty-looking.
"We have been called a trendy, middle class, even upper class magazine. People think that because we produce a glossy magazine we live an easy life." They all laugh, heartily. When distributors take 47 and a half per cent of the cover price, they can just manage to pay themselves ú15 a week. But "I agree with a lot of the criticism", says the Editor.
They tried when they started, Marsha Rowe says, to put in what they thought would interest women - "We were, perhaps, even a little condescending, in the first instance". Now they feel they have opened the magazine up to their readers, and have a clearer idea of what women are really interested in. "We concentrate on women writing for themselves, about their activities, their experiences, rather than sending a journalist to write a piece about them." They encourage their own talent, too - Angela Phillips, formerly a photographer, now concentrates on the legal aspect of women's problems.
Quite a lot is purely factual - with something of a crusading slant. "How to make equal pay work for you" points out that management and union may club together to appoint all-male staff "trainee managers" at ú3 a week more than women workers. What is the situation on maternity leave? The answer is lamentable, unless you work for some sectors of government service. There are exposures of notoriously poor working conditions, in the trendy boutiques, for instance, or for waitresses. There is news - gathered from far and wide, the sex problem column (avoiding, as the Editor requires, the voyeur element as far as possible), and readers' letters, far more than they can ever hope to print, or cope with. It's all on a fairly serious, even earnest level, going back, says Marsha Rowe, to the traditions of some of the earliest women's magazines.
The American element is strong - interviews with Betty Friedan, who virtually started the Women's Lib movement with The Feminine Mystique 10 years ago, and with Jane Fonda in the current issue. Marsha Rowe feels that much can be learned from the American experience, where Women's Liberation is far more active and accepted. To the British reader, however, much of the American material might seem rather strident.
But in any case, Marsha feels there is no going back now. Liberation has happened, even the Government has changed its attitude. "We have had some influence - it's not possible to go back to square one. We want change, and I think it must be political change, not just for women, but for all oppressed groups."
The Ladies' Home Journal, that pleasant publication devoted to hearth and home (even if it did print Betty Friedan 10 years ago) had a slogan "Never underestimate the power of a woman". No one should underestimate Marsha Rowe, the Roses, and their devoted readers. Whatever happens, there is no going back.
.lc Spare Rib was one of the first magazines written by women for women. It set out to be different from the glossies, but as often happens with new ideas, many of its concerns were adopted by the mainstream: the kind of writing mentioned in this article would not look out of place in Cosmpolitan or Marie Claire. The founders of the magazine also moved away from 'underground' journalism. Rosie Boycott, for example, went on to become editor of the men's magazine Esquire. Spare Rib closed down in 1993, in financial difficulty.
